Copa América host nation stepping out of shadows

	The success of Juan Arango (left) and La Vinotinto have baseball-mad Venezuela firmly behind its national soccer team. Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images
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BARQUISIMETO, Venezuela -- There's a big advertising campaign going around here with the slogan, "Football is taking over Venezuela ... or is it the other way around?"

In truth, it's a bit early to talk about the land of baseball and beauty pageants dominating the sport of soccer. But the Venezuelan national team has hit new heights by qualifying for the quarterfinals of the Copa América for the first time.

Much fuss has been made about the fact that last's Saturday 2-0 win over Peru was Venezuela's first in the Copa América in 40 years. But the fact is that La Vinotinto -- or "red wine," the nickname of Venezuela's national team -- has been handing out hangovers in World Cup qualifiers for a few years now.

Aside from Brazil and Argentina, Venezuela has beaten everyone in the continent, and some of them away from home. In its last campaign, it beat Uruguay on the road 3-0. To put that in perspective, in all its history, Brazil has never managed to win a serious competitive game in Montevideo.

Two aspects have been key to Venezuela's rise. First, continuity: Starting with the 1999 Copa América, it has groomed a group of young players and kept faith in them through the bad times. Current stars such as attacking midfielder Juan Arango, holding midfielder Miguel Mea Vitali, center back José Manuel Rey, left back Jorge Rojas and goalkeeper Renny Vega were all part of the squad that went to Paraguay eight years ago.

Second, an important change took place when Richard Páez replaced the Argentine José Omar Pastoriza as coach. The late Pastoriza had done a fine job of spotting talent, but there is no doubt the players respond better to a Venezuelan coach. With Páez came a change of approach -- instead of taking the field mostly concerned with keeping the score down, from now on Venezuela would look to win.

The players enjoyed it, and with a win or two under their belts, the fans came flocking and the momentum kept building until now. It's proving to be a vintage year for the red wine. They have already made history by reaching the last eight of the Copa América. A win on Saturday and they are into the last four.

But whatever happens on the field between now and July 15, in a sense, Venezuela has already won the Copa América. Nowadays, the tournament indisputably plays second fiddle to South America's marathon World Cup qualification campaign, where all 10 countries meet each other home and away.

Indeed, the lineups in Venezuela are so strong and the level of play is so high precisely because the next set of World Cup qualifiers gets underway later this year, making the Copa a kind of glorified dress rehearsal.

More than anything, then, the Copa América is a chance to invest in stadiums -- an opportunity that Venezuela has taken on in full. Nine different stadiums are being used to stage this tournament, three of them brand new. It is the most ambitious Copa in history.

In truth, it is too ambitious. I'm writing this in the new stadium in Barquisimeto, where the last round of Group C matches will be played on Thursday: the U.S. vs. Colombia and Argentina vs. Paraguay.

The stadium looks like a construction site. There is frantic effort going on around me by an army of hard-hatted construction workers. There are open elevator shafts all over the place, and lots of banging, shouting and scrubbing in a bid to get things as near to ready as possible for the games.

Transportation is also likely to be a problem. The stadium is strangely located, miles from the city center and public transport -- so often a South American weak spot -- is unlikely to meet the demand.

This is not an isolated complaint. I haven't managed to make it to Maturín, on the other side of the country, where the glistening new stadium hosted two Group B matches on Sunday. But those who were in the stadium -- which in TV images looks up to European standard -- have pointed out the lack of support structure, such as the absence of any public transportation linking the city and the stadium.

If there are four things you can be sure of, they are trouble, death, taxes and problems in the Copa América. In Peru three years ago, the leading domestic airline was grounded during the competition, leaving many (including me) stranded in Lima. Security problems loomed all over Colombia '01, especially when the local FA vice president was kidnapped. The competition was called off, then brought back on at the last minute and Argentina refused to go.

Then there was Paraguay in '99. The weather was so bad that games had to be taken away from one of the host cities, Pedro Juan Caballero. At the time, the attempt to use the city was strongly attacked. Eight years later, it's possible to see things from a different perspective. Helped by the investments made in the stadium, Pedro Juan Caballero now has a team in the Paraguayan first division, as does Ciudad del Este, another host city. This wasn't the case back in '99, when all the first-division teams came from the capital, Asunción, or its surrounding areas.

Staging the Copa América, then, enabled Paraguay to decentralize its soccer and increase the strength in depth of its first division. A similar process is already taking place in Venezuela. Based on the investments taking place for the '07 Copa, the country is expanding its first division from 10 to 18 teams.

It's this long-term view that I have to keep in mind as the sounds of hammer blows ring in the background in Barquisimeto. Even if the idea of Venezuela staging a World Cup is, at the moment, barely credible, all the work being done just might help the Vinotinto qualify for one.